How to Blend the Night Sky and Foreground in Photoshop

A nighttime landscape shot with the Milky Way over the earth below can be dramatic and eye-catching, but they almost always require two separate exposures for the foreground and the sky to get the best image quality. Once you have your two images, you will need to blend them to create a single final frame, and this great video tutorial will show you how to do it using Photoshop. 

Coming to you from Milky Way Mike, this awesome video tutorial will show you how to blend a foreground exposure and night sky exposure using Photoshop. The need for this generally arises from the fact that the Earth's rotation limits the exposure parameters of the night sky. If you are not using a dedicated tracking mount, you can only expose for a certain amount of time (normally around 30 seconds with a wide angle lens) before the stars will start to blur due to the rotation. Because of the extremely low light levels, this necessitates a high ISO and wide aperture. On the other hand, a lot of the time, you can expose for the foreground as long as you want for better image quality, leaving you with two separate images to blend. Check out the video above for the full rundown.

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

Log in or register to post comments